Mary Shelley (and a bit of Steve Jobs)—On the Art of Creative Waiting

The mathematical genius Alexander Grothendieck once had a metaphor for solving problems. He suggested that instead of forcing open an impossibly hard kernel with a hammer and chisel, one should simply let it sit in water and wait. Over time, the shell softens and opens with ease. This is also true in writing; time is the only non-substitutable ingr... See more

But busyness has a way of stealing creativity from you. Generative work, like art and writing, requires long periods of nothingness: it’s only in that wide empty space that ideas emerge. Long runs, hot showers, commutes that don’t involve harried Slack messages and listening to podcasts at 2x speed. Sitting at the edge of a dock, listening to the o... See more

Because, as Tom Waits so unforgettably observed, the way we do anything is the way we do everything, our style of waiting is a miniature of our style of living: There is impatient and petulant waiting; there is waiting with the humility that while we may be worthy of the object of our hope, we are not entitled to it or to the mercies of time; there... See more